Everything you need to know about Broadcast Captioning in the US
                     EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT 
 BROADCAST CAPTIONING IN THE U.S.
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Broadcast and Captioning 
Industry
Broadcast Media is one of the most powerful mass communication  
mediums which includes any form of audio and video delivery of  
content. Predominantly, it is the Television, Radio, Podcasts, and  
Internet videos that are aimed at reaching the masses. Video  
content in Television and Digital Media has gained increasing  
popularity, especially with the onset of the pandemic.
Captioning is a part of providing digital accessibility to any video  
content. It is not only the number of audiences that have increased  
for video content, it is also an increase in the wide variety of  
audiences coming from multiple language backgrounds, the need to 
 be in noise-sensitive environments, and the hard-of-hearing  
population. Captioning and Subtitling resolves this challenge in  
making all audiences inclusive and contributing to business growth  
and ROI.
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Market Size of Broadcast & 
Captioning  Industry in the US
The market size of the Television Broadcast industry is $63.20 billion, and is 
 expected to increase at 0.6% in 2022, says the IBIS World Industry report 
as  of Sep 2021. The global Captioning and Subtitling Solution market size 
are  projected to reach US$ 441.7 million by 2027, from US$ 261 million in  
2020, says the Valuates Report, a market research consulting firm. The  
above statistics simply means that the number of audiences and types of  
audiences have risen exponentially.
Broadcast Captioning - Laws & 
Guidelines
The bill, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act, was passed in 1990 by the U.S  
Congress. This allowed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to  
draft new rules for the broadcasting industry to include closed captions for  
all video content. This bill was a huge leap in establishing an equal  
opportunity for the hard of hearing people, as it was passed the same 
year  as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
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FCC established closed captions as mandatory in 1998 for all video programs,  
especially for news, entertainment,  and information to all individuals who are deaf  
or hard of hearing. This necessitated all video programming distributors (VPDs) –   
cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors, and other multi-channel video  
programming distributors to caption all of their TV programs. FCC states that closed  
captions need to be accurate, synchronous, complete, and correctly placed.
In addition, a new act was passed in October 2020 by President Barrack Obama by  
the name, CVAA –  Communications and Video Accessibility Act. This act was passed  
to ensure the accessibility laws are on par with 21st century technologies like digital, 
 broadband, and mobile innovations. CVAA includes separate titles which lay out the  
guidelines for video programming.
The Necessity of Closed Captions 
in the  Broadcast Industry
Until the 1970’s closed captions were not included in the Broadcast Industry. It was  
by 1979 when the National Captioning Institute was founded and in 1982, the  
institute developed a process to have live captions in broadcasting. The advent of the 
 National Captioning Institute contributed to the increase in the use  of  closed  
captions.
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A recent WHO report mentions that by 2050 nearly 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss and at  
least 700 million will require hearing rehabilitation. In addition, the number of video viewers in noise-sensitive environments have  
also increased multifold, especially after the boom of 21st century digital innovations. Invariably, global audiences with multiple  
language backgrounds are highly interested in watching video content from many other countries and languages.
The only way to cater to varied audiences is by meeting the substantial demand of digital accessibility.
Types of Broadcast Captioning
Captioning as such are of two types –  Open and Closed Captions; and the format it appears for Television and Digital Media varies.
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Television Broadcast 
Captioning
There are two types of Closed Captioning available
for  Television broadcasting CEA 608 and CEA 708 Format.
CEA 608 Format: The very first closed caption format developed  
during the Analog TV era, before 2009. This is also called Line 21 
 captions. This type of caption format can appear in both analog  
and digital broadcasts.
CEA 708 Format: This the modern standard for
is  captionsc.losed  Thesecaptions can appear  in
broadcastsdigaintdal in tealdedviitsiion, can appear on other
digital  platforms like websites, android, and iOS devices.
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Difference Between CEA 608 and CEA 708 
Captions
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Internet Videos Broadcast 
Captioning
All videos that go live or played as a pre-recorded content in any Internet oriented platforms like Zoom, Facebook, Youtube,  
Vimeo, GoToWebinar, Twitch, Videolinq, RingCentral, Webex, Adobe Connect and many other similar platforms.
There are two types of captioning for all such platforms namely the Open Captions (OC) and Closed Captions (CC).
Open Captions Closed Captions
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"Whatever be 
your  broadcast 
medium
– Television or  
Digital media,  
reach out to  
CaptioningStar"
Services offered by 
CaptioningStar
CaptioningStar is one of the top companies in the United States offering a full suite  
of services in the Captioning Industry –  Live Captioning, Translation, Subtitling,  
Transcription, Dubbing, Voice over and Video post-production and Video editing  
services. We have worked with over 500+ broadcast and film/ video production  
companies in the United States. All our services are compliant with the FCC and ADA 
 guidelines.
Contact us or take up our live chat and mention your questions. We shall get back to  
you within minutes. All our Captioners have over 15+ years of experience, are NCRA  
certified linguists, and are bilingual. Impeccable captions at competitive market  
pricing, and different turnaround times that can accommodate client last-minute  
requirements.
Premium Captions. Over 99.9% accuracy.
100%  Human Live Captioners. Faster TAT. Best Prices.
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108-44 63rd Rd, Queens, NY 
11375
(707) 200-4628 Thank 
[email protected] You
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